These are great ops and easy to work. My only issue is that here in upstate NY I can't even hear them on 80 meters. I have decent but not great antennas for 80M. No Beverage or pennant. How many of you in NA are hearing them on 80M?

These are great ops and easy to work. My only issue is that here in upstate NY I can't even hear them on 80 meters. I have decent but not great antennas for 80M. No Beverage or pennant. How many of you in NA are hearing them on 80M?

These are great ops and easy to work. My only issue is that here in upstate NY I can't even hear them on 80 meters. I have decent but not great antennas for 80M. No Beverage or pennant. How many of you in NA are hearing them on 80M?

Same here in Florida..... Weak signal and QSB as well.

For me, they were clear and easy on 30M CW and RTTY, but they have been just occasionally peaking up above the noise on 80M. I have all sorts of other African countries on 80M (and some on 160M) in the log already. I would love to add 5X for 80M and will keep coming back to listen for them.

What astonishes me about 5X8C (and also TZ6BB) is how fast they upload to LOTW and their online logs. Literally just seconds after me working 5X8C on 30M RTTY, I found that I was in their online log. Wow! And TZ6BB I had verified on LOTW same night too.

We better enjoy the African stations while we have a bunch of guys over there. I had a QSO with a Cappuchine Monk from Italy who is headed for Central Africa and he said they were quite worried about the violence.

These are great ops and easy to work. My only issue is that here in upstate NY I can't even hear them on 80 meters. I have decent but not great antennas for 80M. No Beverage or pennant. How many of you in NA are hearing them on 80M?

They seem to have a great signal on 80m here in VA starting about 30min before Sunset until perhaps an hour or two after sunset and then they have periods of extremely fast QSB 10s of sec peak and long fade making QSO difficult. There seems to be no peak on their sunrise. Based on this I think you should be in the shack a bit before dark and stay there until your enthusiasm dies or you make a Q.

I think that in the last day or so they have made some improvements to their receiving antennas. Before that they would be very loud at SS working JA and then switch to EU with very few NA and having hard time getting callsigns right. I think there was an operator change on Monday night 80CW and they went to SSB. I was thinking well this can't be good... For a while they were listening on a QRG with local ragchew. After a bit they changed their listening QRG and I made a couple of calls and it was done and dusted. I was pretty amazed. Easy SSB QSO when I had previously called for many many hours on CW with much better SNR and was just adding to global warming??? You never know...

On Tues evening at my local Sunset they were very copiable on 160CW for almost 2hrs. For part of that time they were about 579. My RX antenna is K9AY in a very noisy 1/4 acre suburb. They were pretty loud for a station that far away in the middle of landmass. They were working EU making a good rate. I could hear most of the EU callers so I zerobeat the last caller and added few 10s Hz offset and made easy QSO. But I think that was just luck...I think the spotlight was shining on my station for long time on Tuesday. On Monday they were much weaker here but folks a bit farther north (NY,NJ,PA) and NW(OH,MI,IN,IL) seemed to be getting some roving spotlight effect.

Recommendation for low band ops. Try to find them near your SS...Be patient...Promise to follow the DX code of conduct...Maybe the spotlight will land on you...

But if you tune on their frequency or muff up your split button, the DX Gods will likely be mad at you and bad things will happen...I think some of the more polite ops may have a DX Voodoo doll that they are stabbing when they hear this bad behavior and at a minimum it keeps them from adding to the problem :-) Maybe they also have some DF loops and are keeping a list of people they won't help with antenna projects. ;-)

We better enjoy the African stations while we have a bunch of guys over there. I had a QSO with a Cappuchine Monk from Italy who is headed for Central Africa and he said they were quite worried about the violence.

73,

Chris/NU1O

Ever since colonial rule ended, up and down the continent those countries always seem to be warring over something, be it religion, or politics, and what not.....anyone who goes on an expedition to AF is really taking quite the chance....but the same can be said for a sneak in expedition like 7O6T, so it's all in how you handle things.....remember the Annobon Island expedition about 10 years ago???....that almost ended in a fiasco....and a ham from England was killed while operating from Gambia......Man!.......I'd be curious to know, Chris....who was the monk that you contacted, and what was his call sign???.......And what part of Italy was he in?......

This is more of an observation than a complaint-- only about 15% of the 5X8C logged QSO's so far are with North America, with EU scoring around 73%. EU is obviously much closer and has longer band openings. I wonder if they plan to operate the ARRL CW DX Contest this weekend.

I was not able to hear them all that good on 160 meter band. So I decided to make my East Beverage longer . I could not get the ground rod down far enough due to rocky ground so I went about 150 feet further to where the creek has flooded a area and piled top soil up for last 100 years , I would guess. The ground rod taped down easy to 6 feet so I drove it in to 8feet with the sledge hammer and hooked the Beverage up. I spent half the day clearing the trail and so forth.

At my sun set 5:25pm EST on the 11th I could hear 5X8C and at around 6:00 PM local time they peaked to about S7. I heard a number of east coast stations work them but I could not at time.Maybe if I would have had a amp.

My Beverage is now 900 plus feet and I never lost their signal all that night . After sitting there for 4 hours their signal peaked to s3 or 5 and I do not think any one could hear them. There seemed to be many periods where no one called. I heard one USA station call and 5X8C sent their call many times trying to work them. The op never went back to them. Later when I called and worked them it was for a new one on 160 as well as a new zone.

To say I was excited to work a new one on Top Band puts it mildly.

So now I think I built the super Beverage. But last night they faded out around 7:30 and I really never heard them again. So the night I heard them for about 5 hours was mostly on account of propagation and not a new wonder Beverage .

But after using a short 580 Beverage for 3 years I am pretty sure that this 900 foot Beverage is more quiet and has more narrow receive path. Only months of listening will I get a better idea of performance and not having a shorter Beverage to switch to for comparison I will never really know how much better this one is. Just guess work.

I was not able to hear them all that good on 160 meter band. So I decided to make my East Beverage longer . I could not get the ground rod down far enough due to rocky ground so I went about 150 feet further to where the creek has flooded a area and piled top soil up for last 100 years , I would guess. The ground rod taped down easy to 6 feet so I drove it in to 8feet with the sledge hammer and hooked the Beverage up. I spent half the day clearing the trail and so forth.

At my sun set 5:25pm EST on the 11th I could hear 5X8C and at around 6:00 PM local time they peaked to about S7. I heard a number of east coast stations work them but I could not at time.Maybe if I would have had a amp.

My Beverage is now 900 plus feet and I never lost their signal all that night . After sitting there for 4 hours their signal peaked to s3 or 5 and I do not think any one could hear them. There seemed to be many periods where no one called. I heard one USA station call and 5X8C sent their call many times trying to work them. The op never went back to them. Later when I called and worked them it was for a new one on 160 as well as a new zone.

To say I was excited to work a new one on Top Band puts it mildly.

So now I think I built the super Beverage. But last night they faded out around 7:30 and I really never heard them again. So the night I heard them for about 5 hours was mostly on account of propagation and not a new wonder Beverage .

But after using a short 580 Beverage for 3 years I am pretty sure that this 900 foot Beverage is more quiet and has more narrow receive path. Only months of listening will I get a better idea of performance and not having a shorter Beverage to switch to for comparison I will never really know how much better this one is. Just guess work.

Good luck and DXing to All

73 JIM

Great job and nice story!!

Tonight, 2/13/2013 the 5X8C signal was much better on 80 meters, and I was able to work them using my 1/4 wave vertical. It's a HyTower, and I need a tuner to use it at the CW end of the band. That and a KW.

Still no joy here for the 5X on 80 meters, but I did work J5NAR for a new 80m bandfill It was NOT easy.... I need 80m for 8BDXCC, but it's SLOW coming. I am at 61 worked and 30 confirmed. Most of the unconfirmed 30 were worked over the past few months and I sent cards out to all, asking for buro returns. I figured by the time I work the other 40 or so, and hopefully get those last cards quicker (Or LOTW), the buro cards should come trickling in.

With this 31' vertical and my tuner working for all its worth, I doubt I am putting out much of a signal, even with 1KW to the antenna. It is sure not a pileup buster like on the other bands. hi hi

Congratulations on the J5. You are right about all the Africans--I recently worked 7X4, EA9, and 6W in addition to the J5 on 80 with 100W to my 42.5 ft high vertical. The 5X made a lot of stateside Qs last night--maybe I'll have better luck as the pileup dwindles.

You may want to look out for T48RRC--easy to work and will do OQRS/LoTW.

We better enjoy the African stations while we have a bunch of guys over there. I had a QSO with a Cappuchine Monk from Italy who is headed for Central Africa and he said they were quite worried about the violence.

73,

Chris/NU1O

Ever since colonial rule ended, up and down the continent those countries always seem to be warring over something, be it religion, or politics, and what not.....anyone who goes on an expedition to AF is really taking quite the chance....but the same can be said for a sneak in expedition like 7O6T, so it's all in how you handle things.....remember the Annobon Island expedition about 10 years ago???....that almost ended in a fiasco....and a ham from England was killed while operating from Gambia......Man!.......I'd be curious to know, Chris....who was the monk that you contacted, and what was his call sign???.......And what part of Italy was he in?......

Vince,

Although he broadcasted his concerns on the short wave radio I just don't feel comfortable giving out his call and name. I've seen too many odd things happen and although he did not tell me not to repeat what he said, he didn't tell me to broadcast his concerns all over the globe.

Most of us read the news and are aware of what is happening in much of Africa.

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